w York, said in debate that the
United States might well be grateful to both England and France, if they
would agree upon this doctrine as good international law; since in that
case, as there were no fortified places in the United States, she would
never be in peril of a blockade. But it was precisely what England
would not admit nor even discuss as relevant to an agreement to revoke
the orders and decrees.

To "this curious gallamatry," as Quincy called it, "of time present and
time future, of doing and refraining to do, of declaration and
understanding of English duties and American duties," was added another
ingredient of Madison's own devising. The American ministers in England
and France were instructed that Great Britain would be expected to
include in the revocation of her orders in council the blockade of a
portion of the coast of France, declared in May, 1806; and the President
offered, unasked, a pledge to the French emperor, that this should be
insisted upon. Whether he meant to make it easier for Napoleon and
harder for Great Britain to respond to the act of May is a question
impossible to answer; but the opponents of the policy he was pursuing
were careful to point out that the act of May said nothing whatever,
either of this or any other blockade; that when, the year before, the
agreement was made with Erskine, the President did not pretend that the
orders in council included blockades; and that it was remarkable that he
should forget his own declaration regarding the monstrous spoliation of
a few months before by the French, under the Rambouillet decree, and yet
remember this British order of blockade of four years before, which
everybody else had forgotten. Indeed, so completely had it passed out of
mind, that the American minister in London, Mr. Pinkney, was obliged to
ask the British foreign secretary whether that order had been revoked or
was still considered as in force. It had never been formally withdrawn,
was the answer, though it had been comprehended in the subsequent order
in council of January, 1807. England refused, however, to recall
specifically this blockade of 1806, for that would have been construed
as a recognition of Napoleon's right to demand an abandonment of her
"new principles of blockade;" but in fact--as the British minister in
Washington afterward acknowledged--the recall of the order in council of
1807 would have annulled the order of blockade of 1806, which it had
absorbed.